Zulip is a powerful, open source group chat application. Written in Python and using the Django framework, Zulip supports both private messaging and group chats via conversation streams.
Zulip also supports fast search, drag-and-drop file uploads, image previews, group private messages, audible notifications, missed-message emails, desktop apps, and much more.
Further information on the Zulip project and its features can be found at https://www.zulip.org.
The Zulip development environment is the recommened option for folks interested in trying out Zulip. This is documented in README.dev.md.
Zulip in production only supports Ubuntu 14.04 right now, but work is ongoing on adding support for additional platforms. The installation process is documented in https://zulip.org/server.html and in more detail in README.prod.md.
Zulip welcomes all forms of contributions! The page documents the Zulip development process.
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Pull requests. Before a pull request can be merged, you need to to sign the Dropbox Contributor License Agreement. Also, please skim our commit message style guidelines.
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Testing. The Zulip automated tests all run automatically when you submit a pull request, but you can also run them all in your development environment following the instructions in the testing section below.
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Developer Documentation. Zulip has a growing collection of developer documentation on Read The Docs. Recommended reading for new contributors includes the directory structure and new feature tutorial.
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Mailing list and bug tracker Zulip has a development discussion mailing list and uses GitHub issues. Feel free to send any questions or suggestions of areas where you'd love to see more documentation to the list! Please report any security issues you discover to support@zulip.com.
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App codebases This repository is for the Zulip server and web app; the desktop, Android, and iOS apps are separate repositories.
First, subscribe to the Zulip development discussion mailing list.
The Zulip project uses a system of labels in our issue tracker to make it easy to find a project if you don't have your own project idea in mind or want to get some experience with working on Zulip before embarking on a larger project you have in mind:
- Bite Size: Smaller projects that could be a great first contribution.
- Integrations. Integrate Zulip with another piece of software and contribute it back to the community! Writing an integration can be a great started project. There's some brief documentation on the best way to write integrations at zulip#70.
- Documentation. The Zulip project loves contributions of new documentation.
- Help Wanted: A broader list of projects that nobody is currently working on.
- Platform support. These are open issues about making it possible to install Zulip on a wider range of platforms.
- Bugs. Open bugs.
- Feature requests. Browsing this list can be a great way to find feature ideas to implement that other Zulip users are excited about.
If you're excited about helping with an open issue, just post on the conversation thread that you're working on it. You're encouraged to ask questions on how to best implement or debug your changes -- the Zulip maintainers are excited to answer questions to help you stay unblocked and working efficiently.
We also welcome suggestions of features that you feel would be valuable or changes that you feel would make Zulip a better open source project, and are happy to support you in adding new features or other user experience improvements to Zulip.
If you have a new feature you'd like to add, we recommend you start by opening a GitHub issue about the feature idea explaining the problem that you're hoping to solve and that you're excited to work on it. A Zulip maintainer will usually reply within a day with feedback on the idea, notes on any important issues or concerns, and and often tips on how to implement or test it. Please feel free to ping the thread if you don't hear a response from the maintainers -- we try to be very responsive so this usually means we missed your message.
For significant changes to the visual design, user experience, data model, or architecture, we highly recommend posting a mockup, screenshot, or description of what you have in mind to zulip-devel@ to get broad feedback before you spend too much time on implementation details.
Finally, before implementing a larger feature, we highly recommend looking at the new feature tutorial and coding style guidelines on ReadTheDocs.
Feedback on how to make this development process more efficient, fun, and friendly to new contributors is very welcome! Just shoot an email to the Zulip Developers list with your thoughts.
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